Tuesday, September 9, 2008

You may have heard of the blog Funky Finds, which features tons of crafters from around the world. They also have fun contests and giveaways. A companion site to Funky Finds is Funky Town where members can post crafty events going on in their area. The newest addition to the Funky family is The Shops at Funky Finds. This is an online venue for crafters to sell their items and for lucky patrons to buy them.

We opened up a shop after speaking with Jessica and Joe at the Show Pony Show last month. The seller accounts for Shops at Funky Finds are set up on a monthly basis where you get a set number of categories and listings. As long as you pay the monthly subscription, listings are indefinite, sweet! As far as ease of buying is concerned, the site works seamlessly with Paypal with the standard cart system.

One interesting thing about searching the site is that if you search by category it will return shops with items in that category, not individual items. This could be good in getting people to view your whole shop, but does add extra mouse clicking for us lazy types. The individual shop main page does not show items for sale, but is more like a profile page. You have to click on the "shop items" button to see what they have to sell. However, there are ads on the sidebar where shops and items are featured. When those are clicked on you are taken directly to the shops inventory page. It's an extra page to click through to get to the products, but it's not overly frustrating.

What really sold me on The Shops at Funky Finds as a seller, though, is the amazing level of customer service. I was having trouble uploading my photos and Joe called to help work out the problem. We got it fixed and it was a fairly simple issue, but he really took the extra step to make sure that I was happy. It is easy to see that Jessica and Joe want their sites to be useful, fun and functional. If you haven't already checked out the Funky Finds sites, you should do so now. They have a lot to offer and it looks like they're only going to get better.